The Wise and the Foolish Virgins: Representations of Vestal Virginity and Pagan Chastity by Christian Writers in Late Antiquity

A Cloudless Star: Notes on a Latin Elegy by Gerard Manley Hopkins

“…21 The depiction of the beloved in Tristi tu, memini as the chaste attendant to a divine fire, kept at a privileged distance from the material world, is also perhaps a reference to the Vestal Virgins of Rome, who maintained the sacred flame of the goddess Vesta. The association of Vestal imagery with later Christian virginity and specifically with Catholic nuns is discussed at length by Bybee (2002) and Undheim (2017;2020), and this comparison may well be what Hopkins intends here. Whether the beloved of Tristi tu, memini has departed for the monastery or for heaven itself is not clear or necessarily a crucial distinction for Hopkins.…”